Poppy’s Grandparents: Doctor Franklin Sebastian & Elizabeth Dowell

Doctor Franklin Sebastian (middle) and his sons

Doctor Franklin Sebastian was born 29 September 1876 to Zachary T Sebastian and America Caroline Shepherd in Wilkes County, North Carolina.  Unbelievably, I just found out he was a twin.  I am not sure if my Poppy, who lived with him in North Carolina for several years, knew this or not.  Doc’s twin died in 1931 when my grandfather was only 7, probably before he went to live with him, so it is possible his grandfather never talked about it and he did not know.  Perhaps he never thought it important enough to tell.  The more I research the family tree, the more questions I wish I could ask my grandparents and the more findings I wish I could share with them.

On the census in 1880, my great-great-grandfather was living in Rock Creek Township, Wilkes County, North Carolina.  His parents are listed as Z.T. and Amerca C Sebastian.  His older sister, Eliza, is six years old.  He and his twin, Willie M, were three.  Also living with the family at the time were fifteen-year-old Lindy Feder, a domestic servant of no relation, and seventeen-year-old George Wood, a farm laborer of no relation.

About 1896, at the age of twenty, Doc married Elizabeth Dowell, a woman who had lived nearby as a little girl in the 1880 census.  Elizabeth Dowell was born 1 January 1878 in Wilkes County, North Carolina to Frances Dowell and Elizabeth Ann Mahaffey.  On the 1880 census, her family is living in Rock Creek Township, Wilkes County, North Carolina.  She is the youngest of six children.  Her oldest brother, Benjamin F, is 21 and helping her father farm the land.  Her sister Mary has moved out.  I have not done much research on her yet.  Her sisters, Cintha, age 12, and Dorcus, age 10 and brother, Augustus, age 7 are listed in the household as well.  Elizabeth’s maternal grandmother, Mary Mahaffey, age 80, is also living with them.

In 1897, they had their first child, my great-grandfather, Everett Montague Sebastian, followed by their only daughter, Anne Zell, in 1899.  They had another child about every two years until 1917: Robert E, Carey Earl, Hoyle Cecil, Conrad, John Vernon, JD, William Franklin, and Clyde Rowan.  On the 1900 census, Doc is farming the land he owns free and clear in Rock Creek Township.

By the 1910 census, they have added four more sons to the family.  They are still living in Rock Creek, but Doc is working as a miller at a flour mill.  By the 1920 census, the family is living in North Wilkesboro and they have added their last four sons.  Doc is working as a laborer in a cotton mill.

Harry Sebastian at his grandfather’s funeral

On the 1930 census, Doc is back in Rock Creek Township farming again.  Three of his sons are working in a furniture factory.  Somewhere between 1930 and 1940 is when my grandfather lived with his grandparents.

Elizabeth passed away 24 June 1935 and was buried in Rock Creek Baptist Church Cemetery.  Doc remarried Etta in 1936.  They lived together in Rock Creek on the 1940 census.

Doc passed away 29 September 1954.  He was buried at Rock Creek Baptist Church Cemetery next to his wife.

Military Monday: Teaching Children Family History

During World War II, my Poppy, Harry Lincoln Sebastian was an Army Air Corpsman, which later became the Air Force.  He was stationed in South Carolina and later Denver, Colorado where he worked as a mechanic on airplanes.

Harry in front of one of the planes he repaired

Not only do I love history and family history especially, I love to teach my children history, especially when I can find interactive ways to do so.  Last May my Dad invited us along to the regional airport’s air show.  The kids loved all the planes but it was especially meaningful to see a B-25, one of the airplanes their Poppy worked on during World War II.

My children with a B-25 like those their great-grandfather repaired

If you find you have an ancestor who was involved in a particular occupation, branch of the service, or battle, I encourage you to educate yourself on it and take the time to pass your heritage on to your children by visiting such places with them.  It really makes history come alive and become even more personally meaningful.

Grandma Rodgers, Surrogate Mother

George Austin (Sybil Sebastian’s husband), Sibyl Gladys Bemis, & Harry Sebastian

I would be remiss if I did not write about Grandma Rodgers, Sibyl Gladys Bemis.  Grandma Rodgers died on my Poppy’s birthday, 10 July 1979.  I was not quite four years old, and yet, I have memories of her.  She must have had quite a presence.  She was a white haired woman who always sat in my grandparents big red chair when she came to visit, which was not often.  I remember really loving her and her loving all the “grandkids” & “great-grandkids” in the family.

For years growing up I wondered who this Grandma was, how she was related to us.  Poppy and his sisters called her Mom, yet I knew she was not their mom because I knew she died when they were all very young.  I finally learned she was their aunt, who raised Poppy’s sisters, Betty and Sybil.  Yet still, she was some vague disconnected figure to me.  She was an aunt.  That’s all I knew.  If I guessed at anything, I would guess she was their father’s sister because they rarely talked about their mom and knew so little about her family.  Somehow I knew that wasn’t right, and one day long after I was old enough to figure it out, it dawned on me: she was Poppy’s mother’s sister!

Betty Jane Sebastian

Sybil Gladys Sebastian

When Shirley passed away in Dec 1927, Betty was 4 1/2, Harry was 3 1/2, and Sybil was only 9 months old.  At the 1930 census, they were all still together with their dad living next door to Grandma Rodgers, her husband Wallace, and their daughter Delores.  Shortly after that my grandfather went to stay with his father’s parents in North Carolina and the sisters went to live with the Rodgers.  He was back with his dad for the 1940 census, but his sister Sybil was living with the Rodgers in Shaker Heights where Wallace was the custodian of an apartment complex.

Sisters Betty and Sybil

Grandma Rodgers raised my great-aunt Betty Jane Sebastian.  She married at the age of sixteen, divorced, then remarried, having two sons and a daugther. She also raised my great-aunt Sybil Gladys Sebastian who later married George Austin and had two daughters.

The family was separated when young but later shared many happy times together sharing dinner and playing cards.  Betty and Sybil always had a new joke to share every time we saw them.  The sisters lived together again the last years of their lives.

Betty and Harry on a Cleveland street

On Becoming a Yankee

Everett Montague “Mont” Sebastian

Granny’s family is from North Carolina.  Poppy’s family is from North Carolina.  So how did we end up in Ohio, I wondered as a child.  Poppy’s dad was the key.

My Poppy’s father, my great-grandfather, Everett Montague Sebastian, was born 29 January 1897 in Wilkes County, North Carolina, the oldest of ten children of Doctor Franklin Sebastian and Elizabeth Dowell.  His father was a farmer.

12506 Lancelot Ave, Cleveland, Ohio

On the 1920 census, Mont, at age 22, is listed as a “lodger” in the home of James Llewellyn at 12506 Lancelot Ave, Cleveland, Ohio.  James’ two brothers and a sister are also living in the home.  All four are listed as born in Ohio.  However, their parents are listed as Welsh.  All three brothers are listed as working as machinists in a factory while their sister is listed as the keeper of a boarding house.

Mont’s younger brother by four years, Earl, is listed with him as a lodger.  Earl

Walk from Mont’s to Shirley’s, Cleveland-1920

is listed as an inspector and Mont is listed as a moulder in a factory.  Since Earl is only 18, if they came together, I would guess they hadn’t been in Cleveland long.  Four other men from North Carolina ranging in age from 21 to 23 are also listed as lodgers in the home and working in various capacities in a factory.  The home is a mere 12 minute walk to the home his future wife, Shirley, is listed at on the 1920 census.

On 21 August 1922, Mont and Shirley married.  They had three children, Betty Jane, Harry Lincoln, and Sybil Gladys.  Not long after, Shirley passed away in 1927.  Mont never remarried.

The 1930 census finds him and the three children living on Capitol Avenue next door to his sister-in-law and her family.  He was renting the home for $20 a month and working as an inspector in a stove foundry.  The 1930 census is the only census that asks if there is a radio in the home.  Mont and the kids did indeed have one according to the census.

WPA Road Project

By 1940, Mont and son Harry are living alone at a rented home at 6615 Lucerne Ave.  It is difficult to read the line on the census asking how long he had been unemployed prior to March 24, 1940.  It appears to say 184, which would be 3.5 years.  However it also states he made $635 the previous year.  That amounts to $53 per month, $12 of which was going to rent in 1940.  At the time of the census, Mont was “at public work” as a laborer on a paving project.  When I first found this piece of information, I was quite excited.  How interesting to think that my great-grandfather helped construct a Cleveland building, bridge, or road working for the Work Projects Administration.

This led me to research more about Mont’s place in history.  The first half of 1935, Cleveland’s unemployment rate was a whopping 23%.  The largest WPA project in America, the “East Shoreway” (I-90), was built in Cleveland, not far from where Mont lived.  Is it possible he worked on this project?  I was disturbed to find workers for the WPA were the brunt of jokes that they were lazy and that former WPA workers often found it difficult to find jobs afterward because their work ethic was questioned.  A strong work ethic is one of the values my grandfather passed on to us, and I feel sure he learned it from his dad who grew up on a farm.  I remember Poppy telling us he often watched people pull wagons full of fresh food home and asked his aunt why they could not get all that good food.  Her response: “Harry, that’s aid.  We don’t take aid.”  In the end, by the time the WPA ended in 1942, about 27% of Cleveland families had survived the Great Depression thanks to WPA employment. For more information, see this article from Case Western Reserve University.

Mont passed away 22 March 1959 and was buried at Highland Park Cemetery with his wife.

Harry, Mont, Sybil, & Betty behind her

Swinging to Another Branch

Poppy teaching great-granddaughter how to crack nuts

My Poppy, Harry Lincoln Sebastian, was born July 10, 1924 in Cleveland, Ohio, the second child and only son to Everett Montague Sebastian and Shirley Yolanda Bemis.  They had one more child and then, in December 1927, Shirley passed away.  While my grandfather, being a man and from the generation he came, did not talk about his young life or family a lot, I believe both losing his mother so early and the Great Depression had a strong impact on his life.

Betty, Sybil, and Harry Sebastian, 1927

The 1930 census shows my grandfather living with his father and two sisters at 9006

9006 Capitol Ave, Cleveland, Home in 1930

Capitol Avenue in Cleveland.  One amazing part of my genealogy journey this time around comes with the advent of technology, specifically in this case, google maps.  While many family members lived on farms where addresses were not always listed on the censuses, my Cleveland area research has allowed me to google the addresses family members were listed at and see the homes they lived in at the time.  I have really loved that!  I have always felt some strange attachment to places, wondering at the stories the walls could tell if they could talk of the families that lived in them.  Some addresses I googled showed nothing but a vacant lot where a building once stood.

Poppy would take us to see the annual Christmas light display at Nela Park’s GE plant every year when we were young.  On those rides he showed us some places he had lived, shared a few stories, and lamented how downhill the once vibrant Cleveland neighborhoods he had lived in had gone.  He recalled standing outside the Indians’ ball field catching baseballs that were hit out of the park with friends!  Yet, despite his passing on this information, I was quite young and could have never found any of these places again.  My grandfather was only six when he lived on Capitol Avenue so he may not have even remembered it.

In 1940 my grandfather is listed on the Cleveland census living with his father on Lucerne Avenue.  His sisters were not living with them at the time.  The 1940 census also asks where you were living in 1935.  The answer to this question for my grandfather states “same place.”  However, at some point during his early years after his mother died, my grandfather went to live with his father’s parents on the farm in North Carolina.

Harry Sebastian

Seven days after his eighteenth birthday in 1942, Poppy enlisted in the Army Air Corps.  He and my Granny shared many letters during this time.  They had met earlier in Marion, North Carolina through his cousin Mary Catherine Sebastian who was friends with my Gran.  He first wrote her from South Carolina and later from Denver, Colorado where he was a mechanic on airplanes.

Friend and Harry

After the war, Granny came to Cleveland and they were married January 25, 1947.

For awhile Poppy drove a truck delivering for a bread company.  Then he and Gran moved

Harry, second from left, as a driver for Heinz Co.

to North Carolina and he and Gus Watkins, Granny’s dad, operated the S&W Service Center where you could buy fruit for 29 cents a dozen.  They later moved back to Cleveland where he drove a truck delivering for Heinz.  Years later, when my husband and I purchased our first home built pre-1900, Poppy was only able to visit one time.  As soon as we pulled up in the driveway, he told me our house used to be a store and he delivered to it!  Poppy later worked at Ford Motor Company in Parma for many years before his retirement.

Harry behind the counter at S&W Service Center

What’s that for sale 29 cents a dozen?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My grandparents had one daughter, my mother, and moved from Cleveland to the suburb of North Ridgeville where they lived out the remainder of their lives.  We have many fond memories there, including Memorial Day picnics where Poppy would squeeze into his Army jacket every year.

Harry in Air Corps jacket, Memorial Day 1994

Poppy died 4 December 2009.  I promised him his memory would live on as I would share his stories and values with my children and theirs someday.  Poppy had the strongest work ethic of anyone I ever knew.  He lived through the Great Depression and the New Deal, and believed very strongly in making something of yourself on your own.  He smoked for years, but when he quit he kept his last unopened pack of Kents.  I cannot say if this was in case he ever wanted one or to prove the strength and determination he had in the same way he was able to keep a full bar and never touch a drop after he quit drinking.  I like to think it was the latter, and I keep that pack of cigarettes as a symbol of Poppy’s strength and determination.

Poppy reading with great-granddaughter

Poppy holding great-grandson for the first time